Reparations
by swaps55
Summary: Stand alone short in the Exordium-verse. Don't need one to read the other. "The cackle that ripped from the terrorist's throat made Ashley's teeth itch. Her finger squirmed against the trigger as sporadic blue flickers snapped and flared around his body like static. She had never seen Alenko's biotics do that. Then again, she had never seen Alenko lose his mind."


**Reparations**

Ashley Williams tightened her grip on her rifle, narrowed eyes sliding from Shepard to the biotic terrorist who had a pistol planted against the chairman's head. There was a quake in the pistol that Ashley knew was a bad sign, and there was a tenor in Shepard's voice that hadn't been there a moment ago. Beside her, Alenko held his breath.

"You don't want to do this," Shepard said, his own pistol locked on target. Ashley hadn't seen him switch from the assault rifle before they entered the _MSV Ontario's_ tiny lounge, but it meant he was currently in a much better position than she was to take out the terrorist without losing the chairman. Her Tsunami wasn't exactly a precise weapon.

"Force is the only thing people will understand," the terrorist replied, the same quiver she saw in the pistol creeping in to his voice. The three biotics standing behind them had faces made of stone, their hands gloved with blue gauntlets of energy. _Well. Looks like everyone here is all in,_ she thought. _Isn't that just fucking fantastic. _

"You pull that trigger and I'm dropping you to the floor," Shepard said, "Along with everyone else in this room. There's nothing to gain here. Let him go."

The cackle that ripped from the terrorist's throat made Ashley's teeth itch. Her finger squirmed against the trigger as sporadic blue flickers snapped and flared around his body like static. She had never seen Alenko's biotics do that. Then again, she had never seen Alenko lose his mind.

"Don't you get it? We have nothing to lose! This _asshole-_" he jabbed the pistol into the chairman's temple, causing him to wince – "denied the reparations. Do you understand what that means? We have _nothing! _They _made_ us this way! Turned us into freaks and left us out in the cold."

"I'm sorry," the chairman blubbered. "I'm sorry. None of us knew. We didn't _know!" _

The terrorist kicked him hard in the back, sending him sprawling to the floor. Shepard took one short, staccato step forward. Ashely's finger pressed lightly against the trigger. The three other biotics came forward, weaponless unless you counted the bright coronas that flared violently to life.

Ashley counted them.

"Of course you knew!" the terrorist screamed, jabbing the pistol into the chairman's shoulder blades. "It was your _job_ to know! Do you have any idea what it feels like to be made an outcast to everyone who knows you? For your family to look at you like you're a mutant, not even sure if it's safe to be in the same room with you? Do you know what it's like to go to bed every night afraid you'll wake up insane the next morning? _Do you?"_

"Yes."

Ashley whipped her head around towards Alenko, who straightened out of his readied stance and lowered his gun. Shepard's sharp gaze followed his lieutenant, but he made no move to stop him.

The terrorist stared, anger slowly fading into recognition when he saw the blue field playing up Alenko's arm. Ashely glanced at Shepard. Somehow the two of them had suddenly become the outsiders.

"You're…you're an L2?" the terrorist asked.

Alenko nodded, tapping his temple. "Hauled me off to Jump Zero as a teenager. What's your name?"

The terrorist showed the first signs of hesitation. "Jabir Okafor."

"Ok, Jabir," Alenko said, as nonchalantly as if they were conversing at a bar. "Let me guess. The Alliance made it sound like a good deal. Good perks. Comped medical expenses. The training you needed to understand what you are and how to deal with it. They made you feel like you belonged. Then a few weeks into training, maybe more, they take a real good look at your personnel reviews and medical file, and suddenly you're a Cat 6 with no backup plan and no alternatives. Am I right?"

Ashley's chest constricted in surprise. _Jesus, Alenko. What haven't you told us?_

Okafor nodded, expression guarded. "Close enough."

Alenko took a step forward, sliding his pistol into his holster. Shepard's eyebrow twitched, but he remained silent. The silence made her want to scream. "Now everywhere you go people think you're a monster," Alenko continued, voice quiet enough that she had to strain to hear, "and some days you can't help but wonder if they're right."

The other three biotics were paying rapt attention to Alenko now, hope etched on their faces where moments ago there had been a disturbing absence of anything at all.

Okafor looked him up and down. "You look like you did all right."

Alenko chuckled, the same comforting, good-natured sound that he made when Ashley ribbed him about his hair. Only in this case it was rife with bitterness that made something deep inside her just _hurt._ "I worked for it," he said. "And I caught a few breaks not everyone else got."

Chairman Burns chanced a glance up, looking fearfully between Alenko and Okafor. Ashley had almost completely forgotten he was even there.

"It's not fair," Alenko went on. "Not for any of us. But it's not about fair. It never is. Chairman Burns knows that now. He's going to help you. Aren't you?" His voice dropped at the end, harsh and cold. The chairman flinched.

"Yes. Yes, I swear it. I'll do everything I can to get you what you need."

Okafor looked down at Burns, eyes filled with disgust, then looked up at Shepard. "If I let him go, what happens to me? To my men?"

Shepard considered the question for a moment. "I'll assume command of the _Ontario_ until an Alliance ship arrives to take you and your men into custody. You'll be tried, but Chairman Burns is going to recommend leniency."

Burns nodded wearily. Anything to make it end.

"The sentence will be light, but while you're serving you'll be evaluated by medical professionals who can help."

Okafor glared at Shepard, then looked back at Alenko. "How do I know he's not full of shit?"

"Because he's not," Alenko replied. "And he's a Spectre. He'll see to it the Alliance comes through."

Ashley wondered if he would catch hell for volunteering Shepard to do things she was positive he wasn't interested in, decided that under the circumstances it was forgivable.

There was half a moment where Okafor's expression tightened, anger bubbling back to the surface. Ashley had visions of guns firing and Burns' head exploding, spraying the walls with blood and brain. But then he dropped the pistol, the sudden clatter against the deckplates making her jump. Burns scrambled to his feet and darted towards Shepard. Ashley exhaled.

"You made the right choice," Shepard told him.

Williams scooped up the abandoned pistol. For the next hour they set about securing the ship, contacting the Alliance, making preparations to transfer the terrorists. When the three of them finally made it back to the airlock to rejoin the _Normandy¸_ it occurred to her Alenko hadn't said a word.

* * *

She found him in the mess that evening, on one of the late night galley raids he tended to make after a biotic display. Tonight, however, instead of digging into a heaping plate of whatever leftovers he could snag and chatting with Dubyansky, who usually joined him, he sat alone and merely pushed some roast beef around on the plate.

"Sup, killer?" she asked, sliding into the chair across from him. He smiled at her, genuine if she didn't look at his eyes, and offered her a spare fork. He always seemed to have one. She waved it off. "Greico's roast beef tastes more like a varren's asshole."

"Wow," he said. "Thanks for that incredibly appetizing description of the food I'm eating."

"Are ya? 'Cause it looks to me like you're just smearing it around until it dissolves into some kind of paste. Don't get me wrong, it might taste better that way."

He looked back down at his plate. "Yeah, well."

She crossed her arms and leaned her elbows on the table, hearing her mother's voice scolding her in the back of her mind. "Hey," she said after a brief silence, in which Kaidan carefully avoided eye contact. "That bullshit back on the _Ontario._ What you and that terrorist said. Is that really what it's like? To be a biotic?"

He set the fork down and met her gaze, brown eyes still managing to look warm and friendly despite the weary slump of his shoulders. "Which part?"

She gestured widely with her arm. "All of it."

"You mean that humanity tends to view us as sadistic mind-controlling thugs who want to eat their children?"

"You can't be serious."

He shrugged. "It happens. Watch. The next time we're on the Citadel, or wandering around some human colony. Pay attention to the way they look at me before they see the amp, then after. Judge for yourself."

She digested this for a moment. "And the Alliance? Did they really treat you as some kind of wacky science experiment?"

"More or less."

"More or less," she muttered. "Really? Care to elaborate?"

"Not particularly."

She exhaled, scowling. "If you've forgotten how goddamn annoying I can be when I want to know something I'd be happy to remind you."

His laugh was a little more genuine than the smile. "It's just not that big a deal. It is what it is. So what?"

"Big deal? It sounds like you get treated like a faulty VI. Or worse, an AI. Sounds like a big fucking deal to me."

Alenko's brow creased, a sudden change washing over his features that almost made her regret opening her mouth. In the space of a nanosecond all of the worry, frustration and anxiety that she just _never_ saw him carry around like any normal person was laid bare in his expression, so raw she almost looked away. Then, in an almost Shepard-like move he quickly boxed it back up and put it away.

"Fact of the matter is, the Alliance has good reason to treat us with kid gloves," he said, a half smile crossing his features at her poorly concealed shock. "L2 implants have a bit of uh, a reputation." He placed his elbows firmly on the table, lowered his head and raked his fingers through his hair. "They're unstable. Dangerous. Okafor was right. It's like having a time bomb in your head. You never know when – or if – it's gonna go off."

She gave him a long, hard look that he pretended to ignore.

"Kaidan, you're probably the sanest person I know." She leaned forward and craned her head to force him to look at her. "That's not going to happen to you."

He inhaled deeply through his nose and sat back in his seat. "Back on Jump Zero, there was a kid named Ennis. Good kid. He was from…Turkey, I think. Back on Earth. His family reacted about the same way mine did to his biotic 'potential,' so we had something in common. Taught me to play cards."

"Remind me to send him a bill for all the credits you've weaseled out of me, then," she said with playful a roll of her eyes. One look at his face told her it was the wrong thing to say.

He shifted in his chair. "He and I were playing a few practice hands one night in the cafeteria. We weren't supposed to be there that late. But Vyrnuus – our instructor – had put us through a special kind of hell that day, and we just didn't care, you know? Stupid kids, looking for trouble."

She smiled. It seemed so adorably fitting that Alenko's idea of rebelling was to sit around the cafeteria after hours.

"One of the night wards found us, kicked us out," he went on. "No big deal, 'cept he took the deck of cards, too. It was Ennis' deck, one his mom had sent from home. He didn't take that too well, but I didn't really think anything of it. I mean, who would?" He gestured helplessly. "It was a deck of cards."

Ashley's voice softened. "What happened?"

"Middle of the night we went into lockdown. I don't think I would have even known, but I was up early to meet someone for a study session, and I couldn't open the door to my room. When they let us out no one would say anything, but at dinner time I realized Ennis was missing. Found out a few weeks later he'd murdered the night ward who kicked us out of the cafeteria."

"He _killed_ him?"

Kaidan nodded, averting his eyes to the tabletop. "I never saw him again. No idea what happened to him. And that's just one story. There were dozens more like it." That half smile came back, so full of bitter acceptance it made her stomach twist. "It gets so that every time I get another migraine, I wonder. Will this be the one that doesn't stop? Because I swear, Ash, you think you can handle that kind pain, but it _wears_ on you, and after a while you'd give anything…_do_ anything to make it end."

On impulse she reached across the table and placed her hand over his. "You're a good guy, Alenko. Piece of metal in your head doesn't change that."

He looked at her hand, then up at her, surprise etched on his face. Hastily she withdrew, feeling a flush creep up the back of her neck.

"Yeah," he said, his voice oddly toneless.

She watched him for a few moments, the stiff cant of his shoulders, the way he kept his hands in sight at all times, like he expected them to act without permission. There was always something so…_aware_ about Kaidan, something watchful. He was not like Shepard, who owned every move he made because he was so at home in his own body. No, Kaidan knew every inch of himself with deliberate, methodical thoroughness. Every move was planned, every action peer reviewed. It was so goddamn irritating sometimes she wanted to shake him. But watching him now, _listening_ for once, something she was usually so lousy at, made her think.

"Something happened, didn't it?" she asked. "Was it the Alliance? Did they look at your file a little too close, like you said to Okafor?"

He released a low huff of air, like he'd been holding it in for years. "I was a kid when I got sent to BAaTT. Too young to enlist. But it was pretty well understood that was the goal of the program, even though Conatix was running it. I don't think the Alliance wanted to be associated with it until they knew it would be successful." He shrugged. "Not that it really matters. The Alliance was the easiest place for us to go. They _wanted_ us. No one else did. At that age you just want to belong somewhere, you know?"

She nodded.

"But it turns out Brain Camp wasn't quite so glamorous as they made it sound. Surprise, right? The instructor we had – Vyrnnus – he was a turian. Hard son of a bitch. My DI was a piece of cake by comparison."

Ashley thought of her own DI, GC Ellison, and smiled a little. "Of course they brought in the goddammed turians. Of all people."

"I learned real fast that results outweigh prejudice," Kaidan informed her.

"You hated his guts. Admit it."

That look flashed across his face again, guilt, anguish and regret all wrapped up in a perfect little package, before he tucked it carefully away. "Some of us could handle his…training." The word came out of his mouth like he'd just taken a sip of sour milk. "But not everyone's cut out for that." He hesitated, reaching out and toying with his fork. "There was this…girl."

"I knew it!" Ashley slapped one hand on the table, earning her another eye roll. "You are way too gallant and effing _noble_ for there not to be a girl in there somewhere."

His incredulous look slowly became a smile. "Yeah, well, it wasn't like that."

"Of _course_ it wasn't."

"Hey, do you want to hear this or not?"

"Yes. Sorry."

"Rahna was…well, she was great. I won't lie. If it had been more than just friends I would have been ok with that. She was beautiful, smart, shy. Vyrnnus liked to single her out. She was a gentle soul, and to a guy like him it was like smelling blood in the water. One day…he took it too far. Punished her for picking up a glass of water instead of lifting it biotically. Bastard broke her arm."

"A teenage girl? Shit, Alenko. That's flat out abuse."

His face darkened. "It was. And I…reacted. Jumped out of my chair, got in his face. He laughed, wanted to know what a wet rag like me was going to do about it."

Ashley sobered. "What happened?"

"Biotic punch. Stronger than anything I'd ever done before. Sent him into a wall and broke his neck."

Her eyes widened. _Alenko_? The man who would probably apologize for stepping on a spider? The man who was so perfectly _ordered_ within himself, so irritatingly proper and smothered in protocol, had murdered someone in a fit of rage?"

He searched her face, anxiety carved into his features.

She let out a long breath. "God, Kaidan. I'm sorry. But that's not…you. You know that, right? It was an accident. It doesn't make you a monster."

His features softened a little. "It was a long time ago. I've made peace with it. But yes, the Alliance took a pretty hard look at me. Wanted to be sure that what I did was an accident and not…well, the other thing. Scared the hell out of me. I fell off the grid for a while. Needed to figure things out, make sure that I wanted a life where killing people was part of my job."

"Yeah, well," she said after a pause. "I'm glad you did."

He smiled. "Thanks."

A strand of hair that had pulled free from her bun wafted in front of her face. She blew at it, watched it flail, then reached up and crammed it forcefully behind her ear. "What do you think will happen to Okafor? The whole reparations thing? He acted like it was the Alliance's fault he's a biotic in the first place."

Alenko flinched. "Not all eezo exposures were…accidental. I mean, that's not documented or anything. But you read between the lines. Okafor and his men could very well have been honest to God lab rats. They deserve reparations. I hope they get them. Not everyone was as lucky as I was. Credits don't solve the problems they face, but it's a start."

"They're lucky you were there," she said. A comfortable silence descended. Kaidan began fishing around on his plate again, but now that the food had gotten cold even he looked a little disgusted by it.

"Hey," she said. "I know you didn't have to tell me about any of that. It means a lot that you did." A wicked smile spread over her face. "But if you think I'm going to give you any less hell about being molested by a slime monster and carried back to the _Normandy _by a girl, you don't know me as well as you think."

The laugh that erupted from his throat was deep and real, loosening up his entire frame in a way that made her feel a little giddy. "I wouldn't _dream_ of quashing your one moment in the sun."

"_One_ moment? I seem to recall a _moment_ on Eden Prime where the geth would have made jelly out of your brains if I hadn't intervened. Face it, Alenko. You need me on your six just to get out of bed in the morning." She shoved to her feet, grinning.

"You're one of a kind, Ashley Williams."

"Lucky for you."

She could still hear him chuckling as she rounded the corner to the elevator.


End file.
